Stanley Shiel

I am 62 and live alone in Lincolnshire, England.

Being a poet I try to keep to a discipline of daily composition: usually in the early morning; I am a morning person.


I embrace the music of Tchaikovsky, and also the Russian novelists and playwrights of the Nineteenth Century.

Within my home shores I revel in the Elizabethan poets and playwrights, and admire the paintings of John Atkinson Grimshaw, a Victorian artist now much neglected: he had a particular genius for portraying silhouetted trees and moonlit scenes.

I have a love too for a forgotten English novelist, Warwick Deeping: a man whose writing career stretched from 1910 to 1950, during which time he produced over sixty novels.

His style is idiosyncratic, embodying quirky grammar, a distinctive diction and a wide lexicon.




CABARET BLUETTE

The dancers in the cabaret
Close-swirling to suave melodies
Shuffle feet, mingle syllables-
A manic crowd in music's sway.

Above the throng, a vivid voice
Begins a lyric strain and makes
A chanson d' amour that wakes
Desire; for by her vocal choice

A vivifying spell is cast-
In quick electric utterance
Bright-arcing voltage sparks the dance
Like energy of lovers' haste.

The shufflers halt. For so vibrant
Is this charged song, that some are stunned
And shocked within, because they find
Their own love live and resonant.

The dancers leave the cabaret;
Some shamble home with fuddled heads,
But others, hot in heart, to beds
That wait for slumber, dreams or play.

The singer, feeling drained and flat,
Returns home too; drinks a nightcap,
Crawls up to bed, her vital sap
Of art consumed, her work complete.


~ Stanley ~






C A S I N O

The croupier's lithe dealing shoe
now plies rich diamonds, sable clubs,
deceptive hearts, and wicked spades,
all suavely proffered for the chips
that brightly clatter on green beize
to signify an easy wealth
or final hard despairing bet.

Whether Blackjack or Vingt-et-Un,
they both are apt for bringing men
to bread; the croupier's unseen
smile deriving from success in
quick velvet deals, her knowing feign,
dissembling at a contrived win,
her nonchalance, Casino's gain.

~ Stanley ~



JEU DE SONS

Silver trumpets high and clear
golden trumpets warm and pure
violins of silky voice
'cello tones of velvet grace
oboe chords in hollow notes
piccolo's quick-gleaming motes
English horn of fuller sound
bassoon-speech, dark, deep and round
harp's plucked language heard in heaven
sweet celesta faery-given
honeyed scales of clarinet
rushing flute's mad silver glut
dim recorder's ancient airs
breathing pan pipes soothing cares.

Snare drums beating rhythmically
cymbals meeting icily
triangle trills tinglingly--
do we have a symphony?

~ Stanley ~







COIFFURE


The wide black curtain of Lucretia's hair

Held deftly while with gentle strokes a brush

Moves down the glossy glory spread before

A mirror from her tilted head, the swish

Of bristles a susurrating rhythm

In the bedroom where she softly sits upon

A stool with lissom thighs apart, her warm

Silk lingerie so elegantly worn

Contrasting with a cardigan pale blue

Long-sleeved and finely-knit. Later she will

Pull on a tailored trouser-suit--and how

Tight-fitting in mint green--and then let spill

A great cascade of liquorice across

Her neck and shoulders in a fragrant mass.


***************


Stanley. November 2005

congratulation, and wellcome in " Universul Prieteniei"

Vă mulţumesc pentru bun venit!

Cu mare drag stimate domn, ne bucuram sa va avem membru al acestui forum, sper ca veti deveni si membru cu drepturi depline al Asociatiei " Universul Prieteniei", cu respect Mara.